Evolution: Lamarck’s Discovery

Science is not just about truth. Science is truth itself. Thus, the history of science is about how one establishes truth. By itself that history constitutes a science, or more exactly a mine of experimental facts (and an important one), for the metascience of veracity (truthfulness; also called the logic of knowledge, epistemology).

First overall theorem? Misattributing a discovery to another place, another time, or another country is generally not happening by accident, but by propaganda.

In 1825, Darwin’s teacher of biology informed his 16-year-old student that Lamarck had discovered “biological evolution”. (This has been forgotten, thanks to nefarious propaganda.)

Lamarck Tree Of Life, 1809: “…not only will there continually be found new species, new genera, and new orders, but each species will vary in some part of its structure and form…”

That the discovery of the theory of evolution is not attributed to Lamarck, constitute scientific fraud.

Why? It has to do first with Christian fanaticism, which did its best to lie about what Lamarck discovered. Why now? Because most scientists are too busy to read original texts, and it helps that Darwin was Anglo-American.

It was not the first time the Christian fanatics struck.

An example I am fond of is the misattribution to Copernic and Newton of ideas of Aristarchus and Buridan. The Catholic dictatorship, the obsequious servant of 2,000 years of queens and kings, is the engine of this crime. A very profitable crime, as it helped keep the rabble the exploiters were exploiting, in a state of stunned stupidity. Still is.

The misattribution to Darwin of Lamarck’s discovery, evolution, is more of the same theocracy and its associated aristocracy, anxious to keep We The People in haggard dumbness, as we will see below.

Darwinism is Lamarckism, according to Wallace. Wallace was himself a great biologist, discoverer of the Wallace Line. Wallace was on Darwin’s payroll, and was also Darwin’s coauthor. That evolution was Lamarck’s idea was actually confirmed by Darwin, who let Wallace repeat everywhere that Darwin had contributed little, relatively speaking (to Darwin’s daughter’s dismay).

So what are the facts on evolution?

Evolution by artificial selection was known for millennia, and practiced for tens of millennia (the oldest dog known is Belgian, and around 35,000 year old, it was very different from a wolf, and looked like a modern, enormous war dog, showing breeding of dogs from European wolves is at least 45,000 years old, I guess).

Breeding cattle, horses, camels, evolution by artificial selection, was a well-known art, not to say science, already in the times of Xenophon (that’s what the general-philosopher-economist did when retired).

Fossils were known in Ancient Greece. They caused confusion. To remedy this, Aristotle (PBUH), sent his students to study and report on life forms, thus founding, de facto, biology. (That the universe was not in a steady state was illustrated by the fiery landing of a giant meteorite in northern Greece; it was visited for centuries.)

By 1766, after proposing that the Solar System had been accreted from a cloud of debris, Buffon proposed that animals changed: they evolved. African and Asian elephants had evolved from Siberian mammoths, due to the changing their environment that their migrations had brought, he claimed. The details are unimportant: the evolutionary horse was out of the barn. Buffon’s broad picture of environmental pressure on evolution was also to be scientifically confirmed.

The full blown theory of evolution was proposed by Lamarck. This was a great conceptual breakthrough.

When Copernic, copying Buridan and Aristarchus, proclaimed heliocentrism, nobody asked him for a mechanism. Still, one attributes heliocentrism to Copernic. While Copernic did not discover General Relativity, one still do not attribute heliocentrism to Einstein.

Yet those who claim Lamarck did not provide the most modern mechanism for evolution do just this.

One of Lamarck’s book, “Philosophie Zoologique” was published in 1809. The year Darwin was born. Here are some extracts:

“as new modifications will necessarily continue to operate, however slowly, not only will there continually be found new species, new genera, and new orders, but each species will vary in some part of its structure and form … individuals which from special causes are transported into very different situations from those where the others occur, and then constantly submitted to other influences – the former, I say, assume new forms, and then they constitute a new species…. [Species form] “a branching series, irregularly graduated which has no discontinuity in its parts, or which, at least, if its true that there are some because of lost species, has not always had such. It follows that the species that terminate each branch of the general series are related, at least on one side, to the other neighboring species that shade into them” [Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, 1809.]

Lamarck, employed as one of the world’s first research professors, demonstrated both the immense age of the Earth, and natural evolution, by studying fossilized mollusks.

Lamarck was so towering in biology, that he himself coined and installed the word “biology”. Here it is, in his own words, in the original French, in Lamarck’s “Origine Des Animaux Sans Vertebres” [1815]:

Lamarck suggested that the way animals lived could directly affect their genetics. A scientifically confirmed way to get this effect is now called “epigenetics” (“above genetics”). Considering how adaptive life is revealing itself to be, it is likely that more and more “epigenetics” will be uncovered.

It is ironical that Cuvier and his ilk made fun of Lamarck claiming that psychology could leave a trace in the progeny of a creature. Yet, this has been very recently confirmed: Lamarck, a hero for our times.

Lamarck got hated for all this by the forces of Christianity. The idea that a living creature, could, by the way it lived, CREATE its own features was revolting to those who promoted the Christian god.

What Lamarck was saying, philosophically speaking was that the living creature acted as the creator.

No need for a cross, a father, a son, an omnipotent god. Napoleon hated Lamarck. The Church hated Lamarck. British universities, (Oxford, Cambridge, etc.) which, at the time, were bastion of imperial Christianity hated Lamarck.

Really great minds are measured by the disapprobation they entail.

Lamarck proposed that the long necks of giraffes evolved as generations of giraffes had to reach for ever higher leaves.

The Church and Lamarck’s enemies made fun of that (some still do, following the Church!). Lamarck was deliberately mistranslated in English to make readers believe that he suggested the effort of the giraffe somehow directly passed over in its genetics.

Similarly, Lamarck suggested that there are flying squirrels, because squirrels tried to fly for generations (natural selection does not contradict this).

Lamarck did not just propose that evolutionary was driven by behavior. Following Buffon, Lamarck believed life started with spontaneous creation (this is the present view: laboratory studies and the most recent theory show that, in the early Earth’s environment, cellular life would appear spontaneously; fossils show it went fast: chemoautotrophs may have appeared 4 billion years ago).

Lamarck proposed that, insensibly, each baby was more complex than the preceding baby, so evolution would be characterized by an increase in complexity (as it indeed is).

Lamarck suggested birds descended from reptiles.

Lamarck went further than strict “Darwinists” go. He suggested that biology was an increase in complexity that could not be avoided, a sort of anti-Second Law Of Thermodynamics. Lamarck made life into a “force qui va” (to quote Victor Hugo).

This is a piece of philosophy, but one that has probably a great future: the Second Law of Thermodynamics is often quoted against life, but everything indicates that life swims up the stream of the Second Law, as the salmon swims up the river.

After 1815, reaction came over Europe. Jews got discriminated against by the Middle European dictatorship (they could not be doctors, lawyers, etc.). Lamarck, being an enemy of god, was made into an object of scorn.

The lies about Lamarck were deliberately crafted by a Christian fanatic, the biologist Cuvier. Cuvier, in charge of Lamarck’s eulogy misconstrued monstruously what Lamarck said about giraffes, and ill-intentioned unwitting parrots have been repeating Cuvier’s lies, ever since.

Cuvier totally believed that God had created all the species. Cuvier’s arguments are used by Christian fanatics to this day.

For example, after looking at mummies, and recent remnants, Cuvier pontificated that, as there was no evidence of recent evolution, there could be none. Lamarck retorted that Cuvier’s argument was mathematically stupid. Instead, unwittingly, Cuvier had proved, what Lamarck demonstrated first, that the Earth was very old, many millions of years old.

Lamarck being French, some feel more appropriate to attribute the discovery of evolution to the rich English gentleman Darwin, who, besides, was the heir of a financier, and not a vulgar research professor, as Lamarck was.

If Darwin’s teacher taught Darwin in 1825 that Lamarck had established “evolution”, why should we say now that “evolution” was established by the student of the student? Because, being in the Anglo-Saxon realm, we have to be Anglo nationalists? Is it all about tribalism?

As I mentioned this, EJ Winner objected that: “Patrice suggests that the bias against Lamarck is culturally determined (because he was French). This is simply and only post-modernism, in the least convincing sense. Need we really come to this?”

Well, I am not the one who came that way. Christian fanatics showed the way.

It is not because post-modernism is often wrong, that it is always wrong. Science and mathematics are, first of all, tribal phenomena. Sociologically speaking.

Lamarck was lodged at the Museum d’ Histoire Naturelle until his death at 85. Perhaps from spending too much time looking into microscopes, he was blind in his last decade.

Ideas are hard, especially when revolutionary. Parodying Lamarck’s ideas the way the Church did means that no meta-lesson was learned. Those who introduce the greatest new ideas, like evolution, deserve the greatest respect. Not showing respect for geniuses such as Lamarck is not to show respect for what makes civilization advance. Attributing Lamarck’s evolution to Darwin, just as universal attraction to Newton, belittles both Darwin and Newton, as it boils down to calling them liars. And it allows the real enemy to escape unscathed (religious and tribal fanaticism made into the dominant moods).

Attributing Lamarck’s discovery and affirmation of evolution to someone else, sixty years later, constitute scientific, and philosophical fraud. For want of a nicer way to put it.

That this is used to comfort the general intellectual aura of Anglo-American mental imperialism makes it worse. Ninety-six years ago, the First World War finished with a cease-fire. It had not solved the fundamental problem, namely that German speaking people confused dictatorship and republic. That lack of truth led them to have another go at it, 20 years later.

Ignoring truth is costly. Science, and metascience, can teach truth, and how to get to it. This is nicer in the longer term, as human beings are truth machines. Short term, it is anything but.

21 Responses to “Evolution: Lamarck’s Discovery”

The pedant who criticises someone who is trying to make a discovery and does not read what they actually say, and equally does not give credit for the thought expressed as “like something”, is simply a disgrace. For Lamarck to say that giraffes extended their necks trying to get to higher leaves does not mean that each giraffe went to some place and sat down and had its neck stretched. The point is valid, even if the exact mechanism by which it occurs remains unknown. It is an important point that in developing theory, the theoretician does not have to explain everything; he merely has to make an advance. As often as not, the pedant who does the criticising has not made anything, not even a mistake. (As an aside, Newton freely admitted he had no idea what gravity is, and I am far from convinced that any serious improvements in our understanding have occurred. Nevertheless, while not understanding the mechanism for gravity, Newton made a huge advance into understanding celestial mechanics.)

Also, those who say life violates the second law of thermodynamics merely demonstrate their total ignorance of thermodynamics. There are no violations to the second law, and all attempts at making perpetual motion machines that do free work are simply wasting their time and money. The usual way to get into a tangle with the second law is not to properly define a closed system.

Thanks for the support, Ian! Yes, I got some comments from some scientists which are embarrassing in their lack of understanding of the most basic methodology of inquiry. I am actually sitting on some, hesitating to reply (which means lashing back!).

Yes the understanding of gravitation did not progress one iota. Gravitation (or any force!) as a curvature of spacetime (or higher dim space) is a tautology (with all due respect to Riemann). The slight difference between Newton and Einstein’s numbers is, as you know, the fact time slows down in high gravity.

Theories are always bit and pieces, indeed… Even in math (and category theory pushes that to extremes, rightly so. My own finite approach is at the other extreme pole, the other way! ;-))

To accuse Lamarck not to have originated evolution because he did not discover transposons, or preferred millions of years of fossilized mollusks to Galapagos finches, is silly. (Darwin thought the birds were from different species; however another biologist found they were all actually descending from finches; Darwin then incorporated that fact…)
PA

Indeed Coel, indeed. An error not to do is to only focus on creators’ errors. When talking of Newton, one does not focus on his alchemy, or Bible studies. When talking of Buffon, Augier, Lamarck, Cuvier, one has to focus on the ideas that they created, and which proved correct (although Cuvier, by transgromifying Lamarck, built a little hell for himself…).

“The full blown theory of evolution was proposed by Lamarck. This was a great conceptual breakthrough”

It was also the wrong theory, unfortunately.

“Lamarck got hated for all this by the forces of Christianity”

Maybe. In this he certainly had something in common with Darwin.

“Lamarck being French, some feel more appropriate to attribute the discovery of evolution to the English Darwin”

Nah. In fact quite the opposite: almost the only people (with the exception of the above mentioned Jablonka) who still insist on Lamarck today are, ahem, French. And I suspect that nationalism has a lot to do with it.

This was partly answered in version 2.0 of the essay…
The question all serious people have is whether epigenetics is close to the most controversial general evolutionary mechanism Lamarck suggested. The answer is that the set of facts we have is at least partly as Lamarck suggested (say inheritance of stress!)
Differently from a century ago (first attempted Neo-Lamarckism return), now there is explicit detailed theoretical and experimental support for such shocking suggestions.

Lamarck’s career was very long: he was already full professor with chair in 1793 at the Jardin d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

Dismal, indeed! I don’t understand this Massimo. Is he for real? It is clearly Lamarck who was a victim of nationalism. Is he one of these Italians who want to pass for an American? A good fellow? A made man?

It will interesting to see if you have an impact with this, as you had with the notion of plutocrat!

Well, I better stay mum. Experience with professional intellectuals have shown me that they are not a forgiving species… Too much depends on their career, itself tied to their repute, and missteps bring starvation, not just dishonor.

It is ridiculous to ascribe Patrice’s defense of Lamarck’s anteriority as French nationalism, when he clearly fingers French contributions to Lamarck bashing, from Cuvier to Napoleon (not to mention current biology teaching in French universities).

Regarding Napoleon’s opposition, it could be dismissed as an uniform-wearing ignoramus’ misunderstanding of issues beyond his training as a gunner and as a tyrant. Not so. While leading the Egyptian Expedition, he effectively chaired the expedition’s scientific committee and displayed rather astonishing proficiency. When he observed that, had he not been a soldier, he would have been a scientist, a fawning scientist said “alas, General, after Newton’s explanation of celestial mechanics, there is no field left worthy of your genius”, he cut the man short with “there might be little left to discover in the infinitely big, but the infinitely small is still virgin territory”. Not a layman’s answer. So his opposition to Lamarck must be taken seriously and counted against him as a scientist.

Going back to Christianity’s pervasive nefariousness, I observe that an unique feature of Anglo-American culture is the obdurate use of “creature” for “organism”. About as silly (yet purposely so) as the continued use of “ether” for interstellar vacuum, or “phlogistique” (now discontinued at long last) in pre-Lavoisier chemistry.

There are no such things as creatures, period. “Creatures create themselves” is a contaminated expression. “Organisms evolve” is the correct description.

Wow Dominique! Thanks. Yes, I was surprised at the viciousness of the attacks of some physicists on my essay (not posted here). Admitted non biologists, who found me “wrong” and “postmodern” (ironical as I do not like and sharply criticize most “postmodernism”).

I confess to using “creature” myself, and find it amusing that creatures would create themselves, without a creator…

The case of Cuvier is fascinating. He was a great biologist. He discovered extinctions, stratigraphy, found, named and explained, Ptero-Dactyles (in Bavaria), Mesosaurus, etc. He showed species came and went.

Cuvier reached colossal honors, educational and political positions, under Napoleon, going all the way to the council of state and staying there when kings were returned (he became even minister of the interior, I think). Cuvier was able to change his mind. He left amazing books illustrating the species (he got help just for insects). He had a good sense of humor. Still he opposed “gradualism” (slow evolution of species) fanatically (Earth had to have done its thing in 6,000 years?)

This shows how good religion is at making people get the big picture wrong…
(Nice to see you back, BTW… Aidez-vous Valls a valser dans ses difficultes?)
PA

It is interesting how interpretations of only partially formed theories damn the early theorists who did not get it quite right. As an example, quote: ““phlogistique” (now discontinued at long last) in pre-Lavoisier chemistry.” I get the opinion that here the concept of phlogiston (to give it its Anglo name) was something that definitely should have been got rid of. Wrong! The disposal of phlogiston could have set back chemistry by almost a century! First, let us get something straight. Lavoisier made a great contribution to chemistry, but not by getting rid of phlogiston, nor, actually, by isolating oxygen, but rather by developing the analytic balance, and showing that mass was conserved in at least one reaction, and elements combined according to equivalent weights. That was a great advance.

Oxygen was known, and Priestley had found it, and should have worked out that air was a mix of oxygen and inert air (predominately nitrogen). But Priestley, an advocate of phlogiston, got into trouble. First, he showed that by reducing a metal oxide with carbon he made hydrogen. Oops. The problem – hydrogen was flammable air, and the test was to light a tube of the gas and pop it (a test that survived into my school days,dinosaur that I am!) He knew the gas wasn’t carbon dioxide because it did not give a lime water test. What he did not know was that carbon formed two oxides, and carbon monoxide is flammable. As it stood, this test falsified Lavoisier because carbon was not reacting according to tis equivalent weight. (Valence had yet to raise its head.) He had another problem. He worked out that finery cinder was an iron oxide, but it was not formed according to equivalent weights of Lavoisier. Oops – again, iron has more than one valence, and worse, has a number of oxides. Also mass was not conserved when making zinc oxide. (The oxide is too volatile.)

And why was phlogiston potentially good? The concept was that phlogiston was a weightless material that travelled between metal and air, and glued the two together. Think electron. You could not weigh it in a chemical reaction, and had phlogiston stuck, the concept of valence – different amounts of phlogiston, could have arrived decades earlier.

Hmm, what do you mean by copying? Are you claiming that copying is synonymous of plagiarism? If it is so, I’m afraid that you are misguided. Can you tell us a book written by Aristarchus proving the heliocentric theory? This book, if ever existed, is lost and wasn’t known by the Polish astronomer.
Did Aristarchus copy Heraklides of Ponticus? Did Heraklides copy a former astronomer? Did Kepler the same regarding Copernicus? Did Newton copy Euclid? Did Einstein copy Euclid, Newton and Riemann? According to your opinion, it seems that the history of science is a sequence of plagiarists. Who buys it?

On the other hand, you refer to Christianism in an unpolite and confusing way. Luther, that was Christian though Protestant, attacked Copernicus (that was Catholic), and called him insane and heretic. Regarding Cuvier, he based in the Bible his attack on Lamarck, don’t forget that the Bible is not a Christian but a Jewish book. The Christian books are the four canonical Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, 21 Epistles, St. John’s Apocalypse and the apocryphal Gospels.

In other words, if you like mentioning the religious bigotry as a deplorable fact, take into account that the Bible wasn’t written down by Christians. Obviously, there are many examples of dogmatic Christians, scientific and laymen, that have undertaken harmful actions against science, but don’t forget that the Bible is a Jewish, non-Christian book.

Craig Holdrege has an interesting discussion on the giraffe issue, wherein he discusses both Lamarck’s and Darwin’s views on the matter. An importment moment in his quote from Darwin is when Darwin, while noting that long-necked giraffes would have an advantage in eating higher leaves, also remarks “the individuals, less favoured in the same respects will have been the most liable to perish….” The death/ non-reproducibility of animals (including whole species extinction), that have no traits adaptive to environmental change is crucial to Darwinian theory. It actually provides a stronger foundation to the development of complexity than seemingly purposive tendencies to progress. Holdrege makes the point that the giraffe’s neck, not only being long enough for eating, is almost too short for drinking. So why does this ungainly animal with such a difficulty reaching down to water sources have the neck it has? As Holdrege notes, the neck serves several purposes; but the simplest answer is that it survived, and its predecessors did not.

Michael T. Ghiselin also believes that Darwin depended more on Lamarck than many think, that Lamarck is poorly represented in history. But he makes a telling remark:

“Lamarck’s approach to evolution was that of a metaphysician rather than a natural scientist. It invoked a mystical assumption (the notion that organisms sought “perfection” and tended to become increasingly complex and man-like) which could not be treated scientifically (…).” “Darwin’s concept was a well articulated body of scientific thought that could be, and was, tested by recourse to facts. Lamarck’s was not.”

Unsurprisingly, Ghiselin remains a committed Darwinian.

Without belittling Lamarck, the fact remains that Darwin addressed evolution in a manner that articulated known facts and made possible further research and discovery of new data, and that is necessary for a scientific model that is not purely speculative.

As to the Lamarck- Cuvier conflict, it should be remembered that these men came to prominence in revolutionary times. That doesn’t excuse Cuvier, but neither does it make him out to be the ‘Christian fanatic’ you paint him as. Anyway, the history of ideas, while embedded with their undeniable contributions, moved elsewhere.

“Because, being in the Anglo-Saxon realm, we have to be Anglo nationalists? Is it all about tribalism?”

This is the post-modernism of which I complained. Insisting on purely ideological motivations for scientific theory and research, and suggesting such motivations thus delegitimate the foundations of a science, seems dangerous. At which points are the data of the sciences allowed to speak for themselves? At what point can we reach agreement on a theory that adequately explains the data?

Your final remarks seem to wander into some sort of pantheist teleology (not teleonomy); if so, I can’t agree.

No, I mean that Lamarck’s theory of evolution was the wrong theory of evolution.

“Lamarck’s main body of work is just about establishing “evolution””

No, if it were just that then we could definitely credit the pre-Socratic atomists with the idea.

“Because, being in the Anglo-Saxon realm, we have to be Anglo nationalists? Is it all about tribalism?”

As others have said, I tend to consider this a type of unfounded postmodernism and I don’t buy it. Sure, national rivalries do play a role in science, but as far as I can see from my understanding of the history of the field, it’s a minor one, and it gets rapidly overwhelmed by actual progress, regardless of the nationality of the scientist that makes that progress possible.

“attributing “evolution” to Darwin, instead of Lamarck, constitutes scientific, and philosophical fraud. For want of a nicer way to put it.”

Actually, there are plenty of nicer way to put it. But the accusation is obviously false.

Thanks Paul. I posted two essays (one a reblog mostly) on the same subject. I believe that lying about how Evolution was established is greatly the cause of Evolution Denial in the USA (among other places). Indeed they erase the first century of discovering the obvious reasons to believe in evolution. Then they parachute Darwin with half a dozen birdies… 😉

[…] A great progress in Evolution Theory in recent years is that one has demonstrated, theoretically, and experimentally, that genetic behavior, implementation and even inheritance depends, to sometimes a great extent, upon the environment. (Lamarck was right all along!) […]

[…] Lamarck, a research professor in zoology who demonstrated, among other things, biological evolution around 1800, was also a polymath: he started, like Descartes as an officer with a military career. After an injury and illness put an end to that, he became an MD, and, while posted in Monaco, developed an interest for botany, when he observed how much the plants varied with the environment there, among rocky crags, roasting mountainsides, sheltered oases, and fertile canyons. He became the world expert of malacology, which he uses to demonstrate speciation, over millions of years (something the Catholic and Anglican churches hated him for). Darwin, a student of Lamarck of some renown, was also a polymath, like Wallace, outside of academia (Lamarck and evolution couldn’t be taught in England, by law; Darwin and Lyell had to go to Edinburg to be taught evolution). […]

[…] Lamarck was right, we know this better everyday. Darwin learned Lamarckism, as a student in Scotland (“evolution”t was outlawed in English universities). Darwin turned evolution into a version more compatible with plutocracy, the nebulously defined “selection of the fittest”. Hitler and the “intellectuals” who inspired those who controlled that German politician, mentally deduced that “selection of the fittest” meant extermination of those who were not the “fittest”. Hitler didn’t realize that ignorant, self-important morons like him, impregnated with their own gravitas, were not the fittest, but instead the lowest of the low. It is now surfacing that, indeed Darwin, by decerebrating Lamarck’s evolution, missed its most important point. Even Tom Wolfe has understood this (see his 2016 published “Kingdom of Speech”). […]